Hiss and Tell, page 16
“What’s that line? ‘Where’s the money?’ ” Susan laughed.
“If we all knew how much money was out there by ill-gotten gain, would anyone be honest again?” Harry laughed along with Susan. “I’m looking for a connective thread.”
“I can’t think of a thing,” Susan confessed.
“Bear with me. This is pretty thin, but we start with a van wreck. What might be undocumented workers smuggled in where we least expect them. Then we find a man in a ditch, who may well have been in that van. Then the petty crooks are found behind the BP station. And our friend dies from a fentanyl overdose. The other deaths, the bodies had fentanyl in them.”
“Yes,” Susan added more than countered. “The death toll from drugs is climbing. Up, up, and up.”
“Meaning, this may not be usual?”
“I’d say we need to know more about the dead before we connect them with a drug, death on purpose, murder. Know what I mean?”
“I do. But what is the purpose? There’s the answer. But I did fish out another idea.” Harry leaned forward. “Except for the two behind the BP station, all the people work in agriculture in some fashion, more than likely. That’s it.” She threw up her hands.
“Thin, but I’m thinking. This will get swept away by Christmas. If there are facts we don’t know, probably get swept away with the holiday.”
Harry, lightly tapping the floor with one foot, responded, “It’s not so much that, but every day a search slows down, or time drags on, evidence is lost or destroyed in one way or the other. But when I think of Sy, I wonder if this epidemic, or whatever the term is for high drug deaths, is making someone rich. He was never a hard partier. Had a drink sometimes. Loved good food. Grew all manner of succulent, wonderful fruit. So why? He just had a wild moment? He wasn’t a drug person. Sooner or later, we would know.”
“Yeah?” Susan nodded. “He could have taken a pill by mistake. Someone gives him a pill for a headache. Stuff like that.”
“Another long shot. But what did he know that we don’t? If this wasn’t a mistake, taking a pill by mistake, where did he get the pills?”
“Right.” Susan nodded. “We all aren’t wildly stupid. We would have sensed something amiss; I believe it. So this odd death,” she leaned closer to Harry, “is something we either can’t see or can’t imagine. It could be a mistake. It could be getting rid of him.”
“We are a good team.” Harry grinned.
“Most times we are. When I started researching fentanyl, where is it made…as it is a lab drug, not natural…I had a spasm of fear.” Susan laughed.
“I always have those around you,” Harry teased. They enjoyed each other.
Susan returned to their chores. “You think this can be finished tomorrow?”
“Sure. Fair and I can get those firs down here if each of us is on a tractor. We’re good. I’ll lean your tree against the barn.” Harry wondered why she ever thought the two of them could pick two good-sized trees and bring them down. Needed more equipment, but they had selected beautiful trees. “Okay.”
“It’s a push to think. Is there a connecting thread? I don’t know.” Susan got up and pulled cookies from the cupboard. She knew this kitchen as well as her own. “It’s teaching us about streams of disease, discontent, and death.”
“That’s a dark way to put it.” Harry frowned.
“Nothing can be darker than the Curse of Atreus,” Susan tossed out.
“Two and a half millennia and that story still forces you to ask what is power worth? Who are you willing to sacrifice for it and what are you willing to sacrifice? Money? Sex? Fame?” Harry knew mythology. “Generation after generation. We don’t learn, do we?”
“Apparently not. But if our friend was not popping pills, then he got popped. It’s not blood everywhere, but it could be something cruel, or criminal, or both.”
“Do you think in some way we are in the middle of it?”
“Harry, don’t say that,” Susan, exasperated, told her.
“Yeah, yeah. A little dramatic. And how would we get in the middle, anyway?”
26
December 16, 2021
Thursday
“Can we fit one more in?” Harry asked Susan.
“If you hold it in your lap,” Susan replied.
Joel Paloma carried the last basket from his warehouse to the Audi station wagon. “Harry, click your seatbelt, then I’ll hand this to you.”
She did, and the basket was placed in her lap.
Four other cars sat in the parking lot behind the warehouse, each one taking Christmas food baskets. Jodie helped her husband, as did the staff at the warehouse.
“We’ll see you later,” Susan, putting the window down on Harry’s side, told Joel.
“We’ll be here.”
“Put the window up.” Harry found the food basket heavier than she imagined. “Cold.”
“All right. Can you see the list?”
“I remember the first call is the closest to Miller School.”
“We should be able to deliver the baskets and get back for a second load in an hour and a half. We’ve got the western part of the county.”
“And I am so glad. I don’t want to wade through traffic on the eastern side.” Susan, coming the back way, turned right on Miller School Road, then turned left onto a potholed, paved country road.
“Have you ever noticed that often the more modest homes are the ones with the most Christmas decorations?” Harry observed. “How can they pay their electric bill?” Harry worried about costs.
“Maybe they save most of the year for this time. Okay, here we are. You sit still. I’ll get out and take the basket from you. After that we can take turns delivering.”
“Okay.” Harry looked to see a face behind a window, lace curtains drawn to the side.
Susan walked up, knocked on the front door. A young woman greeted her, a Christmas tree in the background. The two exchanged a few words, the young woman smiled, taking the basket from Susan, who wished her a Merry Christmas.
“That was fast,” Harry noted, as often the elderly recipients could rattle on, they were so lonely.
“Baby wailing in the background.” Susan put the car in drive and they headed down the road.
“It’s incredible that Reverend Jones and St. Luke’s raised enough money for five hundred baskets. And other churches matched us. Maybe people are finally waking up to how much need there is in our county, rich as it is.”
“It’s easy to overlook the poor. Ned sometimes takes out maps, the big DMV maps of the surrounding counties, as well as our own, and shows me the poverty pockets. Living in the country, the poor aren’t as visible as in cities. You see the homes but they aren’t necessarily run-down. Some are, of course.”
“Usually older people. They can’t work anymore.”
“With kids on Christmas vacation, maybe they could tidy up the yards of the elderly, or even put up Christmas trees.”
“Never thought of that.”
“Me neither. It just popped into my head. After this Christmas we can talk to Reverend Jones about it. Bet we can all come up with something. The least we can do is praise the kids for helping others.”
“Mom and Dad always did. I don’t know, as I was selfish, but I spent my time with you, my classmates. I sure didn’t think about people, poor and alone.”
“If it weren’t for Grandmom and Mom, I doubt I would have paid attention. Remember the first time we delivered baskets? Our junior year? As I recall, you moaned and groaned because you wanted to play basketball with the boys.”
A slight flush colored Harry’s cheeks. “I did. But I shut up eventually and never missed a Christmas after that. Even during college, because we all came home.”
“Okay. Lorraine Thigpen.” Susan turned into an unplowed driveway, west of Batesville, a small clapboard house at the end. “Glad I have four-wheel drive.”
“Me too. At least there are tire tracks. Someone comes in and out,” Harry noted as Susan stopped, threw the shift in clutch.
“Your turn.”
Harry got out, opened the door to the backseat, where three baskets rested, the rest being in the far back. She wiggled one out, walked to the front door carefully, as it was packed with snow.
An older lady answered the door. She wore sweatpants and a sweatshirt. A wood-burning stove sat at the rear of the small living room.
“Hello, Mrs. Thigpen. I’m from St. Luke’s Church and we want to wish you a Merry Christmas.”
“Oh my.” She reached for the basket. “It’s heavy.”
Fortunately, Harry hadn’t let it go. “Would you like me to put it somewhere?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Thigpen walked to the rear of the house, where a kitchen table, an old refrigerator and stove shared the space with a smaller wood-burning stove.
“Your stoves keep the house warm.” Harry set the basket on the table.
“I wouldn’t trade them for anything. I grew up in this house. Everything still works from when my mother was alive. She was born in 1907. Married William Thigpen. Love at first sight, he said. Mother didn’t say much, but they got along. So many Thigpens in Virginia.”
Harry, hoping to stave off a genealogy recitation, agreed. “There are. It’s an old Virginia name. An important name.”
“My married name, but my maiden name was Fleming. We used to argue whose people got here first.” As she took another breath, Harry saw her chance.
“Mrs. Thigpen, it’s good you got here whenever you did. Merry Christmas.”
Finally back in the car, Susan looked at her. “A near miss?”
“About to get the ancestor parade.”
“Must be hard to be alone.”
“Guess that depends on the person.” Harry pulled the seatbelt over her. “This thing is hard to pull.”
“It is. Car’s getting old. Little things are starting to go or be difficult. I always thought the seatbelts were hard.”
Two more stops and they emptied out the backseat.
“Five more to go. These are big baskets.”
Susan replied, “They are. Joel and Jodie did a great job.”
“And they threw in fifty baskets from their company. Can’t hurt business to have the churches using them this year. The apples are big and red; the oranges, lovely. Cans of Virginia peanuts, carrots. Stuff one can cook or not cook, too. Makes it easier since some of our recipients probably don’t cook anymore, if they ever did.”
“That’s the thing about old men. There’s so much they don’t know how to do for themselves. Their wives always did it.”
Harry agreed. “Division of labor. Is it sexist? Maybe it depends on the labor.”
Susan thought about that. “Maybe. I’d never get anything done if I worried about was it a man’s job or a woman’s.”
“Me neither. Hey, what’s going on?”
Susan slowed as one ambulance, two sheriff’s cars, lights flashing, parked in front of a well-to-do house, just outside of Crozet, not far from Wavertree, a big place. Cars were parked everywhere.
“Looks like some kind of Christmas party?” Harry watched. “That’s Coop’s SUV. Maybe there was a fight.”
Susan was doing her best to move on. Cars had slowed and sirens were heard in the distance. She wanted to get out of the way. “Must be some party.”
“Let’s hope no furniture was destroyed.” Harry smiled. “That house has to have good furniture.”
Finally clear of the impediment, Susan reached the next destination in ten minutes. This time it was a ranch house on an offshoot road of 611, a road that ran south from Batesville.
“My turn.” Susan parked, went around to the back, flipped up the hatch door, pulled out a basket. She knocked on the door. No response. The Christmas decorations, mostly garlands and a ribbon on the door, meant someone was keeping the season. She knocked again. No reply, so she left the basket by the front, card taped to the cellophane.
Harry looked up from her cellphone. “Bulletin. The place with the cop cars, three dead kids.”
“What?” Susan turned the car around, as the driveway had a nice turnaround. “Dead?”
“It just says a party of college kids, parents not home, called an ambulance when three got sick.”
“That’s all it says?”
“For right now. They won’t release the names. Wasn’t a fight or anything like that. Some kind of sickness.”
“Booze?”
“Unless a person guzzles a fifth of whiskey, I doubt they’ll die from drinking. Has to be drugs. I mean, what else could it be?
“The word used is unresponsive. I said dead, the bulletin didn’t.” Harry clicked off her phone. “This isn’t the Christmas I thought it would be.”
Back at the warehouse after dropping off the last of their baskets, Harry and Susan went inside to pick up more.
Jodie rushed up. “Karen McLachen rushed home. Her son threw a big party at the house when he knew she’d be away. Three kids died.”
“That was the McLachen house?” Harry was surprised.
“They moved over near Wavertree. He’s a professor at UVA,” Jodie informed her.
“I’ve seen them from time to time. I can’t say that I really know them,” Susan offered.
“She is on the St. Mary’s committee for Christmas baskets. I drove her home. No way would we allow her to drive.” Jodie’s face looked ashen.
Harry replied, “That poor woman.”
“The officer who came here said Karen’s son told him where she was; he offered to drive her, but I volunteered and said it might be better if one of us did it. He led, siren screaming. Karen sat there almost immobile. I don’t know that she believed it, and yet on one level she did. Joel took over here. He’s out delivering baskets, since Karen can’t obviously.”
“The officer didn’t say anything about violence?” Susan asked.
“No.”
“Drugs?” Susan stated.
“It so often is.” Jodie shook her head. “When I walked her into the house, the place was jammed with college kids, sitting, some crying. The sheriff was there. He thanked me, so I left. I’ve been back here for maybe twenty minutes. The ambulance was gone, so I didn’t see anything else.”
After talking to the other people there and making sure Jodie was all right, Susan and Harry picked up two baskets, all that was left for their quadrant. They delivered them, then Susan drove Harry home.
“Would that party be called a rave?” Harry asked.
“No. A rave is high tech. A DJ, lots of lights, often in big spaces. Warehouses or abandoned buildings. The McLachen party was a bunch of young people, booze, drugs.”
“Music. Bet they had music. Remember back in the ’80s there would be these parties where everyone brought drugs? What they could steal from their parents’ medicine chest, or what they bought from a dealer. They’d drop the pills in a big bowl, and when you walked into the party you’d grab a drug, you didn’t know what, and you’d take it. There’d be lines of coke on smooth surfaces. Lots of ecstasy. Indiscriminate. There’d be some deaths but not like what we’re seeing now.” Harry looked out the window at darkening clouds.
“I never went to one but I remember. I mean, I remember hearing about it.”
They drove in silence then Susan turned onto the farm driveway, plowed of snow, long and winding.
“We deliver baskets every year and I look forward to it,” Harry remarked.
“I do, too,” Susan said.
“We’ve seen a lot in our years of deliveries. People crying because they are so happy to have food. People with one drink too many. Kids left alone. Old people desperate for someone to talk to. And most of us pass these people every day but we don’t really know them. And I have not one idea how to make their lives better, because much of what we see is out of their control. I mean, Susan, for a lot of people alcoholism is out of their control, and that’s legal.”
“That or an eighteen-year-old with three little kids. Did she know what she was doing? Maybe not for the first one.” Susan remembered past deliveries. “Mouths to feed. Who is to say they won’t have a good home, if not a stable one financially? I don’t know.”
“I don’t either, but I do know this is the first delivery time we have ever shared together when three young people died.”
27
August 13, 1789
Thursday
Jeddie walked with Barker O up to the large building where the carriages were built. DoRe accompanied them, John lagged a bit behind, as he walked with Jeffrey. Stepping inside the building, all windows and doors opened, Jeddie marveled at the three carriages under construction. Having never seen the phases of building from the bottom up, he was amazed.
“Something.” DoRe smiled.
Jeffrey’s workers now numbered six in this building and four in the wagon building.
Pointing to the wheels affixed to the axle, Barker O squinted at the juncture. “One inch off and the ride would be a tooth extractor.”
DoRe nodded. “I think that’s our biggest problem. Finding a method for the axles and wheels to absorb some of the bumps. Don’t have it yet.”
“Well, if anyone can figure it out, it will be Mr. Jeffrey,” Barker O complimented the man who had just walked into the building.
“You’ve made progress since I was last here.” John admired the activity; building, marching, planing timberwork. He liked to see it. Be in the middle of it.
“Yes, and I need more workers. I can’t train them fast enough; Toby helps.” He cited Toby Tips, one of his most accomplished slaves. “He can make these things simple. He can teach. I don’t know how to do that, I only know how to build.”
John smiled broadly. “Yes, you do.”
As the men studied each carriage in a different phase of building, Jeffrey, at the most completed one, said, “Putting on the dashboard. Has to withstand pressure.”
“If we all knew how much money was out there by ill-gotten gain, would anyone be honest again?” Harry laughed along with Susan. “I’m looking for a connective thread.”
“I can’t think of a thing,” Susan confessed.
“Bear with me. This is pretty thin, but we start with a van wreck. What might be undocumented workers smuggled in where we least expect them. Then we find a man in a ditch, who may well have been in that van. Then the petty crooks are found behind the BP station. And our friend dies from a fentanyl overdose. The other deaths, the bodies had fentanyl in them.”
“Yes,” Susan added more than countered. “The death toll from drugs is climbing. Up, up, and up.”
“Meaning, this may not be usual?”
“I’d say we need to know more about the dead before we connect them with a drug, death on purpose, murder. Know what I mean?”
“I do. But what is the purpose? There’s the answer. But I did fish out another idea.” Harry leaned forward. “Except for the two behind the BP station, all the people work in agriculture in some fashion, more than likely. That’s it.” She threw up her hands.
“Thin, but I’m thinking. This will get swept away by Christmas. If there are facts we don’t know, probably get swept away with the holiday.”
Harry, lightly tapping the floor with one foot, responded, “It’s not so much that, but every day a search slows down, or time drags on, evidence is lost or destroyed in one way or the other. But when I think of Sy, I wonder if this epidemic, or whatever the term is for high drug deaths, is making someone rich. He was never a hard partier. Had a drink sometimes. Loved good food. Grew all manner of succulent, wonderful fruit. So why? He just had a wild moment? He wasn’t a drug person. Sooner or later, we would know.”
“Yeah?” Susan nodded. “He could have taken a pill by mistake. Someone gives him a pill for a headache. Stuff like that.”
“Another long shot. But what did he know that we don’t? If this wasn’t a mistake, taking a pill by mistake, where did he get the pills?”
“Right.” Susan nodded. “We all aren’t wildly stupid. We would have sensed something amiss; I believe it. So this odd death,” she leaned closer to Harry, “is something we either can’t see or can’t imagine. It could be a mistake. It could be getting rid of him.”
“We are a good team.” Harry grinned.
“Most times we are. When I started researching fentanyl, where is it made…as it is a lab drug, not natural…I had a spasm of fear.” Susan laughed.
“I always have those around you,” Harry teased. They enjoyed each other.
Susan returned to their chores. “You think this can be finished tomorrow?”
“Sure. Fair and I can get those firs down here if each of us is on a tractor. We’re good. I’ll lean your tree against the barn.” Harry wondered why she ever thought the two of them could pick two good-sized trees and bring them down. Needed more equipment, but they had selected beautiful trees. “Okay.”
“It’s a push to think. Is there a connecting thread? I don’t know.” Susan got up and pulled cookies from the cupboard. She knew this kitchen as well as her own. “It’s teaching us about streams of disease, discontent, and death.”
“That’s a dark way to put it.” Harry frowned.
“Nothing can be darker than the Curse of Atreus,” Susan tossed out.
“Two and a half millennia and that story still forces you to ask what is power worth? Who are you willing to sacrifice for it and what are you willing to sacrifice? Money? Sex? Fame?” Harry knew mythology. “Generation after generation. We don’t learn, do we?”
“Apparently not. But if our friend was not popping pills, then he got popped. It’s not blood everywhere, but it could be something cruel, or criminal, or both.”
“Do you think in some way we are in the middle of it?”
“Harry, don’t say that,” Susan, exasperated, told her.
“Yeah, yeah. A little dramatic. And how would we get in the middle, anyway?”
26
December 16, 2021
Thursday
“Can we fit one more in?” Harry asked Susan.
“If you hold it in your lap,” Susan replied.
Joel Paloma carried the last basket from his warehouse to the Audi station wagon. “Harry, click your seatbelt, then I’ll hand this to you.”
She did, and the basket was placed in her lap.
Four other cars sat in the parking lot behind the warehouse, each one taking Christmas food baskets. Jodie helped her husband, as did the staff at the warehouse.
“We’ll see you later,” Susan, putting the window down on Harry’s side, told Joel.
“We’ll be here.”
“Put the window up.” Harry found the food basket heavier than she imagined. “Cold.”
“All right. Can you see the list?”
“I remember the first call is the closest to Miller School.”
“We should be able to deliver the baskets and get back for a second load in an hour and a half. We’ve got the western part of the county.”
“And I am so glad. I don’t want to wade through traffic on the eastern side.” Susan, coming the back way, turned right on Miller School Road, then turned left onto a potholed, paved country road.
“Have you ever noticed that often the more modest homes are the ones with the most Christmas decorations?” Harry observed. “How can they pay their electric bill?” Harry worried about costs.
“Maybe they save most of the year for this time. Okay, here we are. You sit still. I’ll get out and take the basket from you. After that we can take turns delivering.”
“Okay.” Harry looked to see a face behind a window, lace curtains drawn to the side.
Susan walked up, knocked on the front door. A young woman greeted her, a Christmas tree in the background. The two exchanged a few words, the young woman smiled, taking the basket from Susan, who wished her a Merry Christmas.
“That was fast,” Harry noted, as often the elderly recipients could rattle on, they were so lonely.
“Baby wailing in the background.” Susan put the car in drive and they headed down the road.
“It’s incredible that Reverend Jones and St. Luke’s raised enough money for five hundred baskets. And other churches matched us. Maybe people are finally waking up to how much need there is in our county, rich as it is.”
“It’s easy to overlook the poor. Ned sometimes takes out maps, the big DMV maps of the surrounding counties, as well as our own, and shows me the poverty pockets. Living in the country, the poor aren’t as visible as in cities. You see the homes but they aren’t necessarily run-down. Some are, of course.”
“Usually older people. They can’t work anymore.”
“With kids on Christmas vacation, maybe they could tidy up the yards of the elderly, or even put up Christmas trees.”
“Never thought of that.”
“Me neither. It just popped into my head. After this Christmas we can talk to Reverend Jones about it. Bet we can all come up with something. The least we can do is praise the kids for helping others.”
“Mom and Dad always did. I don’t know, as I was selfish, but I spent my time with you, my classmates. I sure didn’t think about people, poor and alone.”
“If it weren’t for Grandmom and Mom, I doubt I would have paid attention. Remember the first time we delivered baskets? Our junior year? As I recall, you moaned and groaned because you wanted to play basketball with the boys.”
A slight flush colored Harry’s cheeks. “I did. But I shut up eventually and never missed a Christmas after that. Even during college, because we all came home.”
“Okay. Lorraine Thigpen.” Susan turned into an unplowed driveway, west of Batesville, a small clapboard house at the end. “Glad I have four-wheel drive.”
“Me too. At least there are tire tracks. Someone comes in and out,” Harry noted as Susan stopped, threw the shift in clutch.
“Your turn.”
Harry got out, opened the door to the backseat, where three baskets rested, the rest being in the far back. She wiggled one out, walked to the front door carefully, as it was packed with snow.
An older lady answered the door. She wore sweatpants and a sweatshirt. A wood-burning stove sat at the rear of the small living room.
“Hello, Mrs. Thigpen. I’m from St. Luke’s Church and we want to wish you a Merry Christmas.”
“Oh my.” She reached for the basket. “It’s heavy.”
Fortunately, Harry hadn’t let it go. “Would you like me to put it somewhere?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Thigpen walked to the rear of the house, where a kitchen table, an old refrigerator and stove shared the space with a smaller wood-burning stove.
“Your stoves keep the house warm.” Harry set the basket on the table.
“I wouldn’t trade them for anything. I grew up in this house. Everything still works from when my mother was alive. She was born in 1907. Married William Thigpen. Love at first sight, he said. Mother didn’t say much, but they got along. So many Thigpens in Virginia.”
Harry, hoping to stave off a genealogy recitation, agreed. “There are. It’s an old Virginia name. An important name.”
“My married name, but my maiden name was Fleming. We used to argue whose people got here first.” As she took another breath, Harry saw her chance.
“Mrs. Thigpen, it’s good you got here whenever you did. Merry Christmas.”
Finally back in the car, Susan looked at her. “A near miss?”
“About to get the ancestor parade.”
“Must be hard to be alone.”
“Guess that depends on the person.” Harry pulled the seatbelt over her. “This thing is hard to pull.”
“It is. Car’s getting old. Little things are starting to go or be difficult. I always thought the seatbelts were hard.”
Two more stops and they emptied out the backseat.
“Five more to go. These are big baskets.”
Susan replied, “They are. Joel and Jodie did a great job.”
“And they threw in fifty baskets from their company. Can’t hurt business to have the churches using them this year. The apples are big and red; the oranges, lovely. Cans of Virginia peanuts, carrots. Stuff one can cook or not cook, too. Makes it easier since some of our recipients probably don’t cook anymore, if they ever did.”
“That’s the thing about old men. There’s so much they don’t know how to do for themselves. Their wives always did it.”
Harry agreed. “Division of labor. Is it sexist? Maybe it depends on the labor.”
Susan thought about that. “Maybe. I’d never get anything done if I worried about was it a man’s job or a woman’s.”
“Me neither. Hey, what’s going on?”
Susan slowed as one ambulance, two sheriff’s cars, lights flashing, parked in front of a well-to-do house, just outside of Crozet, not far from Wavertree, a big place. Cars were parked everywhere.
“Looks like some kind of Christmas party?” Harry watched. “That’s Coop’s SUV. Maybe there was a fight.”
Susan was doing her best to move on. Cars had slowed and sirens were heard in the distance. She wanted to get out of the way. “Must be some party.”
“Let’s hope no furniture was destroyed.” Harry smiled. “That house has to have good furniture.”
Finally clear of the impediment, Susan reached the next destination in ten minutes. This time it was a ranch house on an offshoot road of 611, a road that ran south from Batesville.
“My turn.” Susan parked, went around to the back, flipped up the hatch door, pulled out a basket. She knocked on the door. No response. The Christmas decorations, mostly garlands and a ribbon on the door, meant someone was keeping the season. She knocked again. No reply, so she left the basket by the front, card taped to the cellophane.
Harry looked up from her cellphone. “Bulletin. The place with the cop cars, three dead kids.”
“What?” Susan turned the car around, as the driveway had a nice turnaround. “Dead?”
“It just says a party of college kids, parents not home, called an ambulance when three got sick.”
“That’s all it says?”
“For right now. They won’t release the names. Wasn’t a fight or anything like that. Some kind of sickness.”
“Booze?”
“Unless a person guzzles a fifth of whiskey, I doubt they’ll die from drinking. Has to be drugs. I mean, what else could it be?
“The word used is unresponsive. I said dead, the bulletin didn’t.” Harry clicked off her phone. “This isn’t the Christmas I thought it would be.”
Back at the warehouse after dropping off the last of their baskets, Harry and Susan went inside to pick up more.
Jodie rushed up. “Karen McLachen rushed home. Her son threw a big party at the house when he knew she’d be away. Three kids died.”
“That was the McLachen house?” Harry was surprised.
“They moved over near Wavertree. He’s a professor at UVA,” Jodie informed her.
“I’ve seen them from time to time. I can’t say that I really know them,” Susan offered.
“She is on the St. Mary’s committee for Christmas baskets. I drove her home. No way would we allow her to drive.” Jodie’s face looked ashen.
Harry replied, “That poor woman.”
“The officer who came here said Karen’s son told him where she was; he offered to drive her, but I volunteered and said it might be better if one of us did it. He led, siren screaming. Karen sat there almost immobile. I don’t know that she believed it, and yet on one level she did. Joel took over here. He’s out delivering baskets, since Karen can’t obviously.”
“The officer didn’t say anything about violence?” Susan asked.
“No.”
“Drugs?” Susan stated.
“It so often is.” Jodie shook her head. “When I walked her into the house, the place was jammed with college kids, sitting, some crying. The sheriff was there. He thanked me, so I left. I’ve been back here for maybe twenty minutes. The ambulance was gone, so I didn’t see anything else.”
After talking to the other people there and making sure Jodie was all right, Susan and Harry picked up two baskets, all that was left for their quadrant. They delivered them, then Susan drove Harry home.
“Would that party be called a rave?” Harry asked.
“No. A rave is high tech. A DJ, lots of lights, often in big spaces. Warehouses or abandoned buildings. The McLachen party was a bunch of young people, booze, drugs.”
“Music. Bet they had music. Remember back in the ’80s there would be these parties where everyone brought drugs? What they could steal from their parents’ medicine chest, or what they bought from a dealer. They’d drop the pills in a big bowl, and when you walked into the party you’d grab a drug, you didn’t know what, and you’d take it. There’d be lines of coke on smooth surfaces. Lots of ecstasy. Indiscriminate. There’d be some deaths but not like what we’re seeing now.” Harry looked out the window at darkening clouds.
“I never went to one but I remember. I mean, I remember hearing about it.”
They drove in silence then Susan turned onto the farm driveway, plowed of snow, long and winding.
“We deliver baskets every year and I look forward to it,” Harry remarked.
“I do, too,” Susan said.
“We’ve seen a lot in our years of deliveries. People crying because they are so happy to have food. People with one drink too many. Kids left alone. Old people desperate for someone to talk to. And most of us pass these people every day but we don’t really know them. And I have not one idea how to make their lives better, because much of what we see is out of their control. I mean, Susan, for a lot of people alcoholism is out of their control, and that’s legal.”
“That or an eighteen-year-old with three little kids. Did she know what she was doing? Maybe not for the first one.” Susan remembered past deliveries. “Mouths to feed. Who is to say they won’t have a good home, if not a stable one financially? I don’t know.”
“I don’t either, but I do know this is the first delivery time we have ever shared together when three young people died.”
27
August 13, 1789
Thursday
Jeddie walked with Barker O up to the large building where the carriages were built. DoRe accompanied them, John lagged a bit behind, as he walked with Jeffrey. Stepping inside the building, all windows and doors opened, Jeddie marveled at the three carriages under construction. Having never seen the phases of building from the bottom up, he was amazed.
“Something.” DoRe smiled.
Jeffrey’s workers now numbered six in this building and four in the wagon building.
Pointing to the wheels affixed to the axle, Barker O squinted at the juncture. “One inch off and the ride would be a tooth extractor.”
DoRe nodded. “I think that’s our biggest problem. Finding a method for the axles and wheels to absorb some of the bumps. Don’t have it yet.”
“Well, if anyone can figure it out, it will be Mr. Jeffrey,” Barker O complimented the man who had just walked into the building.
“You’ve made progress since I was last here.” John admired the activity; building, marching, planing timberwork. He liked to see it. Be in the middle of it.
“Yes, and I need more workers. I can’t train them fast enough; Toby helps.” He cited Toby Tips, one of his most accomplished slaves. “He can make these things simple. He can teach. I don’t know how to do that, I only know how to build.”
John smiled broadly. “Yes, you do.”
As the men studied each carriage in a different phase of building, Jeffrey, at the most completed one, said, “Putting on the dashboard. Has to withstand pressure.”
